Lord loves a workin' man

For some time I was a parent’s poster child. I rolled right out of college into a very good job with an employer who paid for graduate school, and then gave me even more money for graduating. I had health insurance and was saving for retirement.

I tried talking shop at extended family gatherings. No one understood what I did, and I got tired of talking about nitrogen deposition and the oxidation of organic matter. Eventually I started just agreeing with people. “Yeah, sort of like a Park Ranger” I’d mutter before finding a reason to walk away.

It was weird. For the years I had been with the Forest Service, only a handful of people really understood what I did. To this day, I don’t even know if even my parents, as proud and supportive as they were, fully understood. The locals knew only that I wielded a government-backed bottomless VISA, propping up their businesses to a degree, and that I worked somewhere “Over der at da Tech.” and that I drove a big green truck “Yah is nice but geez you shoulda really put a plow on 'er!”

Friends assumed I ran around all day functioning highly in my dream job. I definitely didn’t hate it. Some days were awesome. I’d find myself at Lake of the Clouds at peak fall color, or skiing into an old growth Hemlock and sugar maple forest, or mixing a highball after hiking all day and camping on the company’s dime. But then there were the other days, the monotony of compiling data in front of a computer, staff meetings, and mountains of sample to process in a cold windowless lab: the kind of tasks that make a job, well, work.

In hindsight, my bad days were the same as everyone else’s. Only my good days were much, much better. The government though, it has a weird way of shackling people. Collateral duties began chaining me to the phone and computer. Purchasing, supervising a safety program, reading and writing manuscripts. Even my glorious days in the field were so compressed that I barely had time to see the forest for the trees in my way. And at about this time, during the waning years of the Bush administration, budgets were crashing, and we barely had enough money to twiddle our thumbs. Add to that the fact that no one was really listening to anything scientists had to say on climate change, land use issues, or invasive species, and morale was very poor.

Most of you know the history of our decision to relocate to Nantucket and of my harrowing survival on wife support. Except for the amusing bits, I am not rehashing it all right now. My point is that unless work is your hobby, every job becomes just that. A job. As awesome as my job was at times, I couldn’t ditch it to go fishing. All we were ever taught about doing something you love is horseshit. No one loves sitting at a computer torturing numbers or fighting to stay awake during meetings.

My advice to kids now is simple. Do something easy. Easy money, since money can buy you a lot of things. Easy hours so you have time to do what you want. Easy on your body because The Man will take it from you if he can. Easy to explain, so you don’t have to look at blank stares and answer inane follow up questions on the inner workings of Jellystone Park.

I have one of those jobs now. When I tell people I am a Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator, no one asks for more. They change topics. Everyone has to shovel a little bit of shit in their own day to day. This I know. For me, it’s only a bit more literal.

My first two years out here were awesome. I spent the first month or two biking around, going to the beach, and catching bluefish. But we knew zero people, and as fall was setting on and the population dwindling, a job held some prospects for sanity.

Here I was pragmatic. I wanted zero responsibility. I wanted flexible hours and no one in my face. I was lucky when Sam hired me. I made enough money to support my tackle habit and pay for one nice vacation a year. We called off work when bass were in the harbor or the surf was up. He knew everyone, so I did by association. It was fun. I spent a good part of my first winter furlough riding a longboard up and down the coast of El Salvador. Life was good.

A year later my back hurt intermittently. My forearms, when they tan, are a maze of scars, and I had averaged 5 trips a year to the doctor’s office for serious poison ivy rashes. And scheduling conflicts and respect for my marriage kept me away from another Central American jaunt with the boys. Sitting around, drinking and watching TV sure sounded cool earlier in the winter, but was really, really unfulfilling. Wife support and my workout schedule were the only things keeping me from the depths of alcoholism.

I knew I couldn’t run this race anymore. As awesome as working for Sam was (and he was working even harder, right at my side), it wasn’t going to lead anywhere positive for me. It would have been great at 21, but at 32 I feared I would soon be flirting with pathetic.

I applied to grow vegetables at Bartlett Farm. I applied to drive a truck for Fed Ex. I told the Historical Society that I would love to answer their phones and make coffee, and I assured the Cottage Hospital that I did indeed have no problem distributing their mail. I even lied to the people at TSA; “No, I don’t think that screening passengers is a humiliating and soul-crushing job.”

They all said no thank you.

One problem was that I had never applied for a job before. My eventual MS advisor offered me a job sight unseen two months before graduation. It could have been mine for life. Sam had me come out and work for a day, if you can call that an application process. So my interview skills were probably a little coarse.

Another was that I had been institutionalized. Based on my unique set of scientific and institutional skills, any number of government agencies would have been happy to hire me away. If you can keep a specialized job for life, great. But if you lose it, you are so fucked.

The fact is that during a recession the skilled hands of a climate change scientist with expertise in stable isotope ratio mass spectrometry and government accounting software are not needed in the island economy.

Eventually, the chief operator at the Nantucket wastewater treatment plant called me back. I had an interview, a second, and then an offer. Huzzah.

It is actually quite a shame that more people don’t ask me about the work of a wastewater treatment plant operator. For starters, we get paid well. Not outrageously - the work involves more skill than I anticipated, but well enough. I would like to think that management acquiesces to the union demands immediately, lest we drag our dirty boots to their office to speak face to face.

Even after a few months on the job, I still enjoy it. I was trained as a scientist, and I view water treatment through this lens. Wastewater treatment involves little more then applying the nitrogen cycle while manipulating microbiology (both specialties of mine). I can’t rebuild a centrifugal pump seal, but I can identify treatment problems simply by monitoring nitrate and ammonia concentrations from tank to tank.

I fish and surf and boat and do all sorts of awesome outdoor things on this small eroding sandbar we call Nantucket. I care about it. During the last years of my Forest Service career, my scientific efforts were filed away and ignored where it really mattered. Here though, I am creating clean water. I consider myself an environmentalist and believe that our 8-man crew are stewards and do more good for the island’s ecosystem than any other group. And I find that especially rewarding.

Several people wondered why I suddenly was boasting on facebook about my CDL. All glory aside, I am now a working man, union and blue collar. I punch a time clock, which is a change for me both mechanically and idealistically. Having a commercial drivers license is a requirement for the job, as is a uniform. But given the economy and my last three years, it is also a guard against unemployment.

Yesterday I drove the 14 wheel dump truck to the landfill. I was hauling just under 16 tons of polymerized septic sludge. There it is digested with the organic waste stream and turned into compost, which is then piled high in the recycling parking area. Cheap summer folks shovel the free fill into buckets to spread on their gardens, unaware that it was formerly poo. I giggle and drive by.

When people do ask me about my job, the question is always “How do you deal with the smell?” Odds are, if you are a doctor, nurse, or raised children, you have gotten more shit on your hands than I ever will. Our facility is 2 years old, fully automated, and cost 42 million dollars (part of that is an extensive odor control system). Most of my day is spent behind something resembling Homer Simpson’s safety console, or in the lab running analysis. There are of course, a couple dirty jobs worthy of Mike Rowe that we have to do once in awhile, but these rotate and are really as much amusing as terrible.

Besides, this is Nantucket after all. Our shit doesn’t stink.

In Silent Country

We came to this part of the country, to the fir and cedar swamps thickened with Canadian hemlock, after the deer. They would lie in small groups, sheltered from the thieving wind. Under the branches of hemlock and cedar and fir, less snow reached the ground here, and a deer could run without wallowing through the deep drifts. They could outrun a wolf, or paw through the snow at last year’s grass. Even with the migration, they lived a cold and Spartan life. In an average year, a quarter could die of starvation, skeletons with full bellies, bellies full of barks and twigs.

The deer came to this part of the country in the winter with the deep snows and driving wind. They came from a few miles away, from the surrounding woods, and they came from dozens and dozens of miles further north. Only now, Buddy said, they came later and later in the year. Buddy believed in global warming, said that it was changing everything here, the deer, the lakes, and the winter snow. Falls were warmer and longer, and the heavy snows, when they came later, would fall quickly with even more snow.

Buddy had shot the deer, shot and hung it before I even arrived. The doe was a good size, 2 ½ years or more. His old man wouldn’t have liked us shooting does, he said that would mean fewer good bucks later on. “Go shoot your wife” he had told me once, “Go and see how many sons you have then.” It had been his father’s camp, and in his day everyone shot bucks. Every year when Buddy was young and the family arrived for Thanksgiving supper, two or three deer had been shot and were hanging from the pole, all of them good bucks.

That was back when the land was good, back when the country was truly wild. The bridge hadn’t been built, and the highway ran one narrow lane in either direction. Mines were open and ore spilled from the train cars, mixing red with the snow. Tall pines eight feet wide spreading across forests with hard maple were felled in groves by teams of lumbermen. I didn’t know those days. When my days had started, the bridge was always open. One iron mine still ran, but the flow of copper had stopped. Logging trucks still rumbled, but now they were stacked with the small boles of pulpwood. The drive was still long though, and we shot does like the one Buddy had hanging from the pole.

Buddy, then me, were first at the camp. The buildings turned in an arc of a circle, all facing the pole. I parked next to Buddy’s jeep. Walter would come next, and park next to me. Finally Skip would arrive, later that night. The trucks too would all face the pole, closing the circle with the buildings and the clearing and the woods, blocking the camp from the drifted and snow slicked road. As snow fell the cars became another outbuilding, all part of this silent and still and cutover land.

The talk that night would be of girls and friends and families. Of work and weather and fortunes lost and gained. But for now there was only me and Buddy and a good-sized doe, hanging stiff and still from the buckpole.

Walter would talk of the bucks further south, south beyond the heavy snows. Clay loam fields supported farms, acres of sugar beets, oats, and alfalfa hay. There were more deer, many more deer and nice bucks among them. Being further south they would dress out lighter; in response to the northern snows our deer were heavier, he said. Nature selected longer legs and thicker layers of fat. But in the south, deer could eat oats and hay. The better diet was more nutritious, and the antlers of the young bucks would grow tall and broad. Without having to eat bark and lichen and buds like they did up north, they would mature quickly on a good diet. And there would be more deer, he said, enough deer so that we could all shoot does and maybe even take a good buck too.

If a farm was what we wanted, Skip would say, we could all buy a camp together. Together, further south, where the land was better and the deer were many, and where we could all shoot as many does as we wanted. Skip was a realtor there and knew that country. I guess we all came from the south now, in some way. Everyone except Buddy; he had married a local girl after school, and now cut timber for his father-in-law. The rest of us all drove up. We would discuss coming all the way to camp. The past few years had been difficult. If the camp were closer in the south country, still good country, we could get to it easier. That meant more weekends hunting, brushing trail, scouting. Deer would come further south, to our farm Walter said, during the December hunt. They would escape the cold wind and heavy snow and graze in thick herds over the stubble of our cut over fields.

Through all of this conversation, Buddy remained silent and tended the stove, the woodstove that burned all day night to drive off the still and stubborn cold.

Walter would shoot his doe that first morning. He had an eye for the land. One wet and warm fall, we had tracked a deer for three miles through these big woods. Over Thanksgiving break it had rained and driven off the snow. The wet leaves cushioned our boots and Walter had followed the big track, through its impressions in the carpet of leaves, through the swamp and open maples. The deer circled a big loop, crossing our tracks, winding us and running off. He always had an eye for these things, Walter did. When I heard the shot from my left, I followed the sound. The smell of sulfur grew strong in the slackness of the morning, and I followed his tracks like a hunter of men. At a clump of hair and specks of bright red blood, my prints merged with those of Walter and the deer.

Thirty-five steps I had counted, the lead ball traveled thirty-five snowshoed steps. The impact was broadside, and the doe had run but another forty yards before she fell. She lay still now, having been felled by a clean and straight shot through the tangle of fir and cedar. Walter bent over his doe checking the teeth and the hooves for wear, feeling the layers of fat. “It’s a healthy deer,” he would say to me, “a good healthy doe.” I would nod and shake his hand for making a good clean kill.

I held the hind legs while Walter cut. A clean kill would mean a cleaner field dressing. The best cuts would spoil with a poor shot or inexperienced hand. He worked elbows deep, and then packed the cavity with snow, replacing the liver. When the doe was hung from the buckpole, he would retrieve the liver, cut the windpipe, and remove the heart and lungs from the chest cavity. The grim work would finish, and he would stew the heart and liver and tenderloins for dinner.

Skip would be back at camp when we returned, Walter dragging his doe and me carrying his rifle.

The rib cage was hung from the pines. Once, when it was too cold, we cut chops and left the broken ribs for the coyotes. Buddy had to show us how to use the chainsaw to butcher the frozen deer. He had grown up when it was always cold, and the carcass would freeze too hard for the delicate butchery that we now preferred. They used olive oil to lubricate the bar and filed the teeth down and rakers low. Chips of bone and meat fell in straight lines, Buddy said, flung from around the buckpole in pink ribbons to become fodder for the mice and the whiskey jacks. But now all of us, even Buddy cut the backstraps off whole, searing them in thick iron skillets. The rib cage we hung from the red pines on the edge of the clearing. Chickadees and nuthatches perched to pick at the gristle and fat.

In late fall the deer were still fat and full. Walter and Buddy’s deer each had broad strips of tallow in their backs, and in hard firm bumps along the loins. It was a hard life they had lived, and in a hard life they flourished. When overcrowded, they would develop and pass disease; too many deer, and too many livestock and too many people were harder and more violent than starving to death in the snow.

Deep in the swamp, by accident, I had followed a beaten run. One track had combined with two and then four others, leading to the edge of an alder swamp. Hemlocks towered over the side of the bluff, silent olden soldiers standing watch over the narrow valley. The cold wind had wrested the top from one of these giants. From a distance, it lay green, pointing from the toe of the slope. Tracks grouped into a single path, beaten flat around the hemlock top. With bellies full, the deer would not be far, chewing and rechewing the needles, a safe distance away in the swamp: they would venture out again.

I found a spot above the snag, halfway up the bluff, taking refuge behind a wedge of snowy basalt. The little wind drifted south past the tree, past me and away into the valley, the way I had come. I wasn’t walking now and I took off my orange vest, my safety blaze of color. Here I waited, I waited and ate and sipped coffee, glassing over the snag. When the deer came out, they came out in groups, family groups of two or three or five. The mother doe steps out first, leading her one or two yearling fawns. She smells the wind, standing still and silent, her tail twitching, head immobile and statuesque up in the air. Walking, she drops her head, sniffing at the snow a few steps at a time raising her head, always alert. The deer feed, stripping the hemlock needles with their tongues and their cheeks. They pressed in through a tangle of bare branches, jumping and ducking. They were no longer alert now, feeding quietly in the silent afternoon.

Silently, I wait, me and the three deer and my rifle. I wait for my buck, the buck whose track led across the road and into the swamp, past the big hemlocks and merged with the others around the snag. In this good country, in this still and silent land, I wait for a grunt, and the shadowy bone white motion of antlers silhouetted by the black tangle of fallen trees and alder branches. The rut is over now, and the buck has mated. He is wary now, tired and worn down. Silently he waits; he waits in the darkness of swamps for the cover of night. He has been harassed, hunted, and chased. He may bear the scare of a broadhead, or a limp from an errant slug. A ghost, skillful and silent, he waits.

Two more deer walk from the swamp to the snag. A lone doe trudges from up the valley, heartened by the site of her brethren. The buck enters from down valley, his small horns bright white against the cedar green brush. Stillness gets stiller, and through the glasses I can count three distinct prongs. The springbuck is 1 and ½ years old, and has spent his fall going through the motions, the rites and passages of his kind. He is an outcast, solitary and aloof, without the awareness and concept of fear. Likely he has been chased by the older and grizzled bucks, chased from feeding areas, and chased from the bleating females in estrus.

The sun sets, the five deer feed, and I wait in silence. Night and darkness are not far off. Setting down my glasses, I brush snow from the riflescope, resting it on the granite slab. The scope is clear and bright, brighter than the glasses. The first doe continues feeding; through the scope I can see the curve of her haunch and the fatness across her flanks. She is full and calm and bright. The young buck is smaller, stands shorter, tired and beaten from the travails of the rut. But he is young and alone, and stands to survive the winter.

When the shot rings out, four deer retreat to the swamps edges. The report rolls up the valley, and returns, weaker. White smoke billows, obscuring the view, and then clears. Sulfur stings my nose. Silence returns, heavy and oppressive. The big doe has bounded only a few feet from the tangle, and sunk to her knees. Her head is still up and alert. I eye this through his scope, again fixed upon my prey, watching the doe with her eyes still bright, her head held high and proud. She stares up the valley along the swamp to where the two points meet, not towards me, or at her two yearling fawns. She sits under the trees in the snow with a full belly, bright and calm and still.

I wait behind the granite, my back to the bluff, watched by the quiet air and silent trees. Too many times I had gone right after the deer, pushing it bleeding into thicker and thicker cover. I wait, prying the primer from the breach and tossing it away. After a quarter of an hour her head was down on the snow, and there would be no need for another shot. The three-pointer, too young and too small, bounded away with a grunt as I pick my way down the bluff. My doe lay on her side, silent and still, red mixing with the snow. She had been quartering away from me, and the field dressing would show I had taken a lung and an artery, and she had bled quietly on the snow. Two small yearling deer watched me approach, watched the three-pointer bound away, and then turned to go as well. It was a good-sized doe, I thought, a good clean shot. She would fill a cooler and feed us well. It was a good deer, shot in good country, I told myself, a country cold and still.

That last night we would sit in the camp, drinking loudly and with cheer. The camp was made of cedar timbers, chinked tight with stuffing and caulk. Four rifles hung above the plank table, and the woodstove glowed red in the faint kerosene light. We knew that we would return to the camp, to the simple frame structure. It bounded us within its four walls, within the circle of the woodshed, the clearing and the trucks, under blankets of snow, all facing in toward the buckpole. The circle would remain unbroken until the early morning, when Skip would leave, followed by Walter. Buddy would stay the week at camp alone, and try to kill his buck.

I would drive back home on the next day through driving snow. December snows came deep and heavy and the wind whirled powder across the lakes. The landscape was sterile and silent. Even when the snow didn’t fall, the wind would whip loose powder into a blizzard. The world was shrouded in a grainy opaqueness, though through gaps I could see the blue sky above. The same blue sky over my home looked over this good country. When the winds fell and the powder settled, everything looked fresh and sterile and cold. In this country beauty was stark and wild, mercilessly frightening. It was so clear and beautiful my heart would ache. I drove back, alone through the small and shuttered mining towns and crossroads where logging trucks rumbled, hauling timber south to the pulp mills.

Black Wave Bay

The big wave hit him squarely and solidly and he shuddered at the impact. It ripped the board from his grasp and sent him over the falls, tumbling and tumbling into the wash. He covered his head and rolled with the barrel, fighting nothing thinking of nothing but calm and peace and going loose. Pressure was in his ears as he was forced downward and bumped the sand in the brown and foamy water, pulled forward by his leash and the buoyancy of his board, ripped from his hands and tumbling forward on the surface. At long last the wave overran his board, released him, and he swam up from the dark.

White foam hissed around him, settling back into slack water. Mentally he counted down the seconds, his personal timer calibrated to the period of the swell. Two seconds reunited him with his board; with every following second he regained three strokes on his previous position. After thirty strokes the next breaker towered white and heavy overhead and he dove deep, deep and straight and beyond the pull of the whitewash. In two dozen more strokes he had gained enough to turtle under the last wave of the big set and holding the board in his hands he weathered the impact, the force flipping him upright. The next set was small and breaking inside, and he paddled around the crest and safely beyond the break zone.

No one understood the contradiction, he thought. No one knew the beautiful ugliness, the terror and anarchy below the surface. Perhaps the volcanic sand obscured the detail. The water here was murky, a churning brown on even the best day. Cliffs and hills and deep ravines, broad plains and haze-ringed volcanoes dominated, stark and impressive; but here the black sand reflected the light from the surface. Here the landscape was scarred with the historical markers of fire and water.

The swell had been kicked up from a strong low pressure system traveling up from the frozen continent. The storm would never arrive, not in the dry season. But it sent its army, pulling up and dropping the sea, sending ripples across the Pacific. And now the vanguard was arriving. It was traveling slowly and inexorably toward him in due time. The big swell would arrive tomorrow.

Still, he thought, it was already building. That last outside set had appeared quick and heavy and had rolled and pinned him good. He tried to punch through it, suck up the face of the heavy wave and punch through. But the wave had steepened quickly over the outer break and he found himself turtling halfway up the face. He had been rolled and pinned and tombstoned along the bottom in the swirling chaos. Yet the surface he knew, looked innocent. The sun rose behind a tower of haze casting light without color. At the morning’s offshore breeze the crest paused momentarily, and spray blew backwards away from the beach and across his face. Birds squawked from the ceiba and almond trees, and smoke rose from the fields behind the top of the ravine. The waves would peel slowly and gracefully from right to left and the pounding torrent of the big swell was inaudible from the shore.

A still lagoon ran deep into the ravine, backing the narrow flat beach. The beach, the narrow fishing boats, and the mist-backed cliffs were behind him now as he faced outward at the wide and open Pacific. He faced the horizon watching the swells roll in. Several smaller sets passed underneath raising him up and down; they were shallow here, and would break far in toward shore. Then the first wave of the big set came in, hurtled across a vast sea in a violent tempest to meet him here under the calm dawn of the tropical sun. Spinning his board, he paddled gently toward shore, holding his spot, the spot he had picked off the rocky point break where the big waves straightened and turned to a fluid curl. As the big wave rose he paddled now, to keep in place, the place where gravity would break him from the current that pulled uphill.

He paused with his hands flat on the surface of his board. This was a dangerous second, a nexus where fear and guts and skill all met. If the wave felt too deep he could still bail and dive deep, down deep under the wave away from its pull, deep enough to hide from the circular violence of the oncoming crash. Precipitously now he would gain speed sliding down the face of the wave. Too long of a wait, and the wave would steepen, and he would bury himself at the toe of the slope and then it was into the wash.

With feet under him he brought the board under control, cutting a wide and slow turn at the bottom of the wave. He waited, trailing a finger into the liquid wall. The barrel was almost on top of him now, and he bent down, grabbing the rail, hurtling forward, foam exploding behind him. He exited the tube as if shot from a cannon born again, baptized into the calm fury of salt and spray and swell.

There were other waves that day, bigger and heavier, but that ride would go unequaled for the morning. Riding straight and tall carving turns moving up and down the wave, stalling and gaining speed, he too would look innocent and calm. Innocent and calm and peaceful like the surface of the water he skimmed. Others joined him, freed from the gates of the surf resort, later risers, good for an hour before the wind switched. La Chica paddled into the lineup, a client in tow. They all bobbed together, a line of solidarity facing away from the beach eyes scanning the limitless horizon in the morning light.

The whine of a motor and whistle of a man pulled him from his reverie. “Eh! Sereno!” He paddled over to the skiff and the slender brown man at the tiller. “Quieres unos camarones?” Chipe was long and lean like his skiff, and with his face weathered dark and stiff looked beyond his years. He throttled down, pulling him along slowly, inexorably out past the break and up and over the swells. Past the danger of an outside wave Chipe idled. The priest from San Miguel had blessed his boat and the boats in the fleet, holding a mass on the beach at low tide. He’d attended too, watching from his hammock across the beach.

“Si.” He thought of the upcoming swell moving toward him, across the wide pacific. It would thunder against the cliffs, and push over the beach to the lagoon at high tide, refreshing the stagnant water with oxygen and fish and crabs. “Es posible para tu esposa cocinar?”

“Ven a las ocho.” Chipe made the sign of the cross and pointed the skiff west, past the rocky point, and motored off to tend to the nets. Sereno paddled back to the lineup, knowing well that none of the fishermen would want to fight the big swells tomorrow or the day after. He paddled to La Chica, and they spoke quickly and quietly in Spanish, making a show for her client. The rest of the lineup looked at him, the friend of fishermen and another oddity washashore out past the breakers off the narrow beach. He made room for her client; following his lead the Americans did the same. More came paddling out, paddling through the crash of the big swells and gliding quickly over to the narrow take off. He paddled into the next wave riding ahead for the narrow beach and dropping to his board as the wave faltered, riding the whitewash into the shallows.

The sand was hot, black flecks of ash were hot in the sun, and the ground felt good and hard under his feet. He walked in the cool sand on the waters edge, around the narrow half moon bay to the foot of the bluff that extended out to form the point break. His hotel was there, the thin line of bare cinderblock rooms. Chipe’s parents owned the hotel, its five block rooms under the bluff and up against the homemade seawall. He rinsed in the outdoor shower, him and his board both. The room was cool now but would bake under the sun. He’d been just another gringo during the first weeks sitting in his hammock and surfing and watching the flow of the tide in and out. It could reach the seawall and beyond working up the constant slope of the hard packed sand. But it never reached the lagoon, the still and scum covered water behind the trees.

One morning sitting in the sun in his hammock watching over the fishermen launching their boats into the churning surf his Christian name had been forgotten. By now the young fishermen had come over, accustomed to a smoke or a drink between checking and mending their nets. Gringo tranquilo, he was then, the white man who came and surfed and sat quietly and humbly, who shopped at the market speaking their language in his broken and quiet voice. He had started by helping launch the boats, spinning the long and narrow skiffs to lift the bow under the cart, heaving and pushing up the slope of the wet sand and sweating hard under the overhead sun.

Sereno he became, a name called to his face and picked up by the village children. It was good to have a name he thought, it was good and appropriate to be christened in this manner, to be given a name by his family in the sleepy village nestled into the bluff.

From his room he grabbed his tobacco pouch and his cooler and some fruit from the market, stowed his board and put on dry shorts and sandals. He pulled a bottle of water from the cooler, kept cold with bags of ice, impure water frozen from the trickling creek that fed the lagoon behind the village above in the deep ravine. He drank his cold water and ate his fruit, watching the surfers paddle and jockey for position off of the break. Soon the wind would switch, the sun high overhead would heat the land and pull the breeze onshore sending chop across the still tranquil water. The wind would ruin the morning surf.

On these days he would usually broker trips with the fishermen, when the wind was bad or the surf was flat. The Americans from the surf camp, from behind the gated walls would gather on the beach, bored and tired. He would set up trips for them with the local fisherman who spoke no English but could troll behind the big shrimp boats to the west, catching tuna and jacks. The fishermen would get fifty dollars, seventy-five if fish were caught. Sometimes for those with cars he would arrange for a guide to take them to the high cerro or to San Miguel for the bullfights. The rumor was passed from guest to guest, and they would search for the man called Sereno. But today the young fishermen were all out on the water, checking their nets before the big swells rode in.

He rolled a cigarette with the rich tobacco from the pouch sprinkling with the broken pieces of mota. It was better this way, and he smoked it slowly feeling the tide recede. When it fell below the far rocks, across the other side of the narrow beach, he would carry his shirt and his tobacco pouch and walk around the rocks to El Cuco. When the tide receded in the day he could walk the beach to town, where it would be cooler and quicker than the hot and dusty road that ran behind the village over the bluff behind the lagoon. There the cars and trucks rattled over washouts carrying cattle and pigs and workers to the farms to the west. It was hot and dusty and narrow and hard to get a ride. On the beach he could skirt the cliffs and walk on the wet hard packed sand, still cool from the falling tide.

In El Cuco he ate at a small restaurant facing the town square. The food was no better or no worse than the others there. A window opened toward the beach, and the cross breeze kept it cool. Sun was bright and hot outside the window and the door, but the narrow room funneled the wind keeping it in cool shade. Here worked Nica. She was approachable. She wasn’t from here, and had no protections of family. A family, he knew could serve to protect someone against graft and violence and disorder. Without a family to protect her, he could approach and talk and dance with her without getting anyone upset.

After his meeting with Nica he ambled across the square. The town had a small open-air market with fruit stands and a few vendors. He filled a bag with Pilseners and old bread and fruit and a bottle of wine before walking back down the slope to the beach. The tide was still low and coming up higher and he walked heavy with his parcels around the rocks to his porch snug in the rocks between the bluff and ocean.

He swung in his hammock, drinking and smoking under the shaded porch. Reaching out with his hand he explored the seams in the block wall with his fingertips, and pushing off he swung back and forth suspended in the air. The movement was reassuring; the breeze was not enough here to make him swing and he would otherwise lie still and hot and stifling. Air rushed by and made him dizzy and made the landscape of sky and sand and ocean swing in diminishing arcs before his eyes. He did not want to lie still and unmoving.

A dog nosed his hand, and he pushed off of the dog, swinging back and forth in the shade and breaking pieces off of the stale loaf and feeding them to the dog. He was unusual: healthy, fully fleshed and collared. He belonged to La Chica and she would be nearby if the dog was here. He rolled another cigarette thick and full tamping the heavier end and holding it out when he heard the scrape of a sandal on concrete and the dog’s ears pitched forward. Her client had been safely guided back to his hotel at the surf camp she was building east of town along the big lagoon east of El Cuco. Dark and lithe, she took the smoke and a beer she pulled a chair alongside. Everyone had expected him to provide her protection. She needed none though, and his advances had gone unrequited some time ago. Now she extended a leg to the toe of his hammock, rocking it gently and drinking her beer and smoking slowly in blue curling wisps. And it was enough, and better this way, moving slowly and without effort in the shade.

Together they watched the tide come up to the homemade sea wall, stones laid one by one by Chipe’s father. The tide came up and the wind blew stronger onshore and one by one the riders came in from the breakers until none were left. The tide was high and the big sets crashed in solid walls, rushing and rebounding off the bluff and the sea wall in chop and confusion. Wood and leaves and trash swirled in the wash a few meters from his feet, swinging slowly and rocking gently too and fro. But the wall was built well by Chipe and his father, and it would be many years before the mortar crumbled and was undercut by the rushing water.

There they sat, under the shade of the roof drinking and smoking, she rocking him gently and rhythmically. “It’s gonna be all time” she said. “It’ll be firing double tomorrow.” He took a long slow drag, and rested his hands in his lap.

“Yeah, it’ll be all time for sure.” He thought of tomorrow’s high tide, surging forward, driven forward by the big swells unridable in a heavy afternoon onshore breeze. He’d never seen it reach that far up the beach, to the tail of the long and narrow and stinking lagoon. It would be good for the waves to wash over the beach he thought, and refill and renew the lagoon with fresh water and new life. “It’ll be all time,” he whispered again. Under the roof in the shade of the hammock he drank and smoked and dozed and slept. The fishing boats came in, over the breakers, fighting against the swirling chop and then gliding gracefully to a stop in the shallow water. The young men would run down with the dolly, balancing the middle of the boat and run it up to the trees, chocking it still in the sand. The wind rocked him gently now, and he was swinging alone in the shade.

When the sun dipped below the bluff he went to work and retrieved his second board. He didn’t care for the feel or look of the big gun. It was thinly narrow and pointed like a weapon for a soldier going to war, and surprisingly thick and heavy despite its sleekness. He waxed the board heavily and checked the leash for kinks and tears. Cool air moved past him, slowly pouring off the land and down the ravine. As he worked in the shade he could feel the land exhale and the water flatten.

The takeoff points would be full tonight. The big swells were starting to break overhead now, and the long pauses gave everyone a chance to paddle through the low surf to try their hand at a big wave. When he paddled out he was among the first, but far from the only one out, and had to wait until he could catch his first wave. The gun was fast and squirrelly and wanted to run out from under him. The wave was steep and fast and he plunged down its face, cutting a bottom turn so sharp he threw himself from his board and was cycled through the wash. He took two more waves, duck diving fluidly deep below the tipping crest. With the next drop he spread low and broad, leaning into the turn. Riding the wave as far as he could, he practiced his cutbacks, coming back into the closing wave. The big swell tomorrow would break steep and fast, he thought, and was no place to be uncomfortable.

After four good rides he rode the whitewash in, flat on his belly, arms levering the hanging teardrop of the gun’s nose. Darkness was oncoming and the waves were no longer the danger. Day was failing and in the flat glassy light he couldn’t see the other surfers to steer around them. He felt ready and awake, and he walked along the water’s edge, even though the sand was now cool. When the big swell came tomorrow he would be ready for the excitement, excitement made even more palpable when tipped with fear.

Other surfers came off the water and gathered in tight knots along the beach, watching night as it came over the narrow beach. There was safety on the beach, in and among the families that came down to enjoy the onset of darkness and catch a cool breeze in the open air. They would swim and play soccer on the narrowly slanting beach, safe in the company of their families. Sereno too was safe, though danger could now lurk in the jungle and among the rocks toward El Cuco. He stowed his board and retrieved his cooler from his locked room, taking a six-pack to the palapa near the boats. The fishermen gathered with their families, lean and brown and younger than he. They drank and smoked and together watched the children play.

When the time felt right he walked back and rinsed under the shower. The sun had set and the rooftop cistern had cooled. Drying himself partially he let the water remain on his chest; the slow moving night air would help to cool him. Around the hotel he walked, up the steep rocky hill level with the road and skirting the edge of the village above the lagoon. In the shade of the trees the lagoon failed to reflect any light, it was dark and black – a blank spot, a canker in the middle of the beating heart of this fishing hamlet. It should provide fish, crabs, a cool place to swim, a sanctuary, he thought. He thought of rope swings and barbeque and kids splashing while floating idly in white plastic inner tubes while mothers gossiped and fathers listened in a group around the radio. Walking around high above the lagoon the water had dried and he started to sweat, carrying his shirt with the beer and wine to keep it clean and dry.

He crossed the deep ravine at the head of the lagoon. It was undersized for the slow trickle that it now held. He neared a row of homes that lined the road where the bluff flattened and bent to pick a few palm-sized rocks. When the dog rushed him he skipped a rock in front of it and sent him back, barking and false charging in fear. The next one drew a yip and the dog retreated back into the yard.

Carmen always greeted him warmly, even before he was Sereno and when he was barely even gringo tranquilo she was polite and demure. She made a fine wife and kissed him on both cheeks. She and Chipe always welcomed him into their home, and he was glad to present her with her favorite wine. Carmen would have made him a fine wife he thought, smart, bright and industrious. She showed him to the table, opening and bringing them beers and hustling the children indoors. Occasionally she would check on them, bringing more beer and salsa.

They ate together. Chipe had saved him five of the largest prawns; the rest ate chicken. He found that without exception fishermen would not eat their catch. Carmen had boiled them in a thick sauce and served them over rice with beans and tortillas and fried plantains. Simplicity and honesty ruled women’s' kitchens and he had learned to eat without a fork, peeling the shrimp and scooping the beans with the thick flat tortilla and licking his fingers clean. After dinner they danced to the radio, Chipe and the older children laughing and hooting pointing at the big slow and clumsy man dancing with their mother.

He left the couple to dance and he fetched another round of drinks. The small refrigerator was hidden in a cubby outside. Chipe had always been a successful fisherman and his income had been well augmented by guiding tourists to jacks and tuna and bullfights. Despite a ceiling fan, radio and the small refrigerator they remained practical people and had built a lean-to thatch roof against a cinderblock wall. It was cooler to cook outside, though Carmen used a propane burner instead of the wood grill. He poured her another glass of wine and popped the tops on two more bottles of Pilsener. The dancing had ended and Carmen left to put the children to bed.

Together they drank the cold beer and rolled cigarettes. When Carmen returned it was to take up her sewing under the light and warn her husband with no uncertainty in her eyes. Chipe waved her off. Sereno’s head started to buzz and the blood pounded in his ears. He was floating now above the table, the ravine, the lagoon and the small fishing village with the beautiful right-handed point break. He looked from the clean break over the beach to the still and dark lagoon. “La laguna,” he asked, “Cuando nueva agua llegar?”

They both looked at him, unsure of what he was asking or why. How could he ask them he thought, about the lagoon and when it was refreshed; when the trash and the filth would be cleansed by new water? He started again. “La laguna de Los Flores, es con mala agua, si?

“Si.”

“La agua is vieja y muy sucio. Manana, los grande olas limpiar la laguna?”

“Es possible” Chipe said. “Es possible con viento y olas.” He shrugged without commitment. Wind and waves he thought, a day of wind and waves could reach the lagoon. If not, when the rainy season came the ravine would turn into a torrent and flood the lagoon with freshwater. He could wait he thought, to see it flood during the rainy season; it was but a short time away.

“En estacion de la lluviar, el rio limpiar la laguna?”

“Quiza si, quiza no.” Chipe was noncommittal again, rolling another cigarette. “El rio llega a agricolas ahora.” He thought of the farms, the pigs, cattle and melons that all grew to the west. They were thirsty for water, and the water from the little creek now flowed, diverted to the farms. He lit and took a long soulful drag, holding the tickling smoke inside his lungs he exhaled looking up into the jungle canopy.

“Comprende.” he said, “Comprende.” He understood and thought of the growing swell, sliding closer during the night and the inevitability of its arrival. The swell would arrive and the waves would crash and thunder, and the lagoon would be renewed. It was inevitable. Wind and rain and water had helped shape this earth and in the end, would prevail. He felt sure of it. The swell was timeless, ageless. People, he thought, their lives and lies and abuses, could never stand against the insoluble inevitability of wind and sun and surf. They sat in the dark now, drinking in the soft light cast from a waxing moon. He thanked them for dinner and received kisses and hugs. Chipe said he would be there to watch him ride the big waves tomorrow. Carmen would say a prayer to St. Ignacio that evening for him. Few, if any of the fishermen would go out today and many would pass the day watching the big surf.

Walking home in the darkness he stopped above the still lagoon. The moonlight reflected off a narrow patch of water, surrounded by the propping roots of the mangroves. The roots kinked and coiled around and over the open water encircling and squeezing the pool. It reminded him of cow’s heart he had seen under the glass case of a butcher shop, as a child, a heart attached to the veins and arteries, a still heart cold and bruised that didn’t beat. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the garbage, the scum, though it was black and still. He picked up a rock and threw it hard and far, trying to hit the lagoon and send ripples across the still and dark surface. It fell short. Others rattled around the thick trees. Some things, he decided as he gave up on the labor, couldn’t be reached.

Consciousness came slowly in the predawn. The hammock didn’t swing and he’d rolled his head away from the water during the night. A dog barked and a bird squawked a shrill and urgent cry. He was aware of the same sense of urgency, gnawing at him slowly and roiling him inside. In the stillness of the morning he heard the first crash and hiss of the surf pounding its way inward along the break. When the tide rose the swell would thunder and shake the rock itself.

He made preparations, drinking a bottle of water and eating two bananas. He stretched his back and shoulders circling forward and back. He rechecked the leash and board and put his room and porch all into order. The big swells were rolling and he felt the inevitability of their pull. Paddling through the inside break he hit the first wall of wash but the reformed wave had already been broken and he punched through. He stayed well off the point now; as the big swells rose and fell they unzipped across the small bay. The rises were towering and the troughs were deep, deep enough at this tide to roll and bounce him among the jagged rocks off the bluff should he falter.

After the inside break he paused and slowed his paddle. The big swells were firing, unfurling in clean lines from right to left. They were thick and heavy and he would need a break to get under and through. He paddled, slowly keeping in place and riding up and over the reforming waves. Then he accelerated, digging and pushing himself forward shoveling hard as a boil of water folded down toward him. He rocked forward and dove the nose deep under the upward pull, deep into the dark and cold water feeling the pressure from the water until it passed and he popped upwards safely behind the wave. The effort had knocked him backward and broken his momentum and he dug harder and faster, diving under two more waves. His shoulders burned as he paddled hard, pulling himself out and into the ocean. Gritting his teeth he adjusted his course left and up and around the unfurling lip of the last wave. Still he paddled, out and beyond the break of the heavy outside sets where he paused, panting and spent. He let the current pull him back in line with the takeoff near the break, watching the sets roll under him and steepen on their collision course with the land, detonating on the point with indifferent violence.

Waiting, he kept his spot on the outside, waiting for the next big set. He was not going to put himself in too deep, not this early. The gun still felt squirrelly. And the waves... At low tide the big sets were breaking far out on the point, further than he had ever been before in the deep water. They were shallow sloped, and then steepening in the upper half to throw a huge oblong barrel. He had never seen these back-heavy waves before, never here nor anywhere else. Out in front of the break he had to paddle hard to catch speed in the shallow part of the wave, double hauling until he started to drop. He dropped slowly into the toe of the wave, rising well over his head behind him. Crouching low he moved up the shoulder and into the steepening section of the wave and turned back to the bottom feeling sluggish and slow. Picking up speed he cut back up the face of the wave, exiting over the top in a burst and kicking the board away for a clean landing. He felt ready, and gathering his board he paddled out to the takeoff.

Ready and waiting, deep into the takeoff, he sat calmly on his board, with flat swells rolling under him. From the horizon he watched his set roll in. In the troughs he lost sight of it, rising again the lead wave appeared, slowly closer and closer. Then there was no doubt as the wave towered above him, sucking up and steepening. He turned his board, looking over his right shoulder he only saw the wave, it was kicking up big and he was racing backwards up its slope. At the shoulder he felt his feet lift higher and he popped up, low and straight. He would need to be ready for the drop and if he were too deep in the break he would need to dive deep and hard or be pinned and smeared into the rocks. He hung motionless on the shoulder as seconds ticked by and then the wave fell away. It fell away and he plunged straight down fast and headlong. He pressured the tail out left and took the force of the bottom turn in his knees carving a wall of spray as he climbed back up the wave riding a roundhouse cutback back into the barrel. Cutting back again the barrel engulfed him He rode on the shoulder matching speed as the barrel rolled and rolled. And the sound… The muffled opiate trance of the sound of a circular tunnel of solid water defied physics, defied acoustics: it was loud and calming and rushed through his ears like a throaty wind.

The rest of the morning he surfed the big swells until his arms ached and his legs trembled. He rode in as far as he could and then paddled slowly to the inner break, riding the wash to where he could plant his feet into the sand. Looking back he watched the few remaining riders dropping into waves that were breaking double overhead and more, throwing barrels and exploding onto the bluff.

He had been out a long time, longer than usual. The wind had held and the big swell kept most riders sitting on the beach. They eyed him silently as he walked alone. The tide was out but rising, and the hot black sand burned his feet as he walked to the seawall and into his hammock. Sleep came fitfully and started and stopped. He was so tired, with sleep oppressively heavy and pinning him down making his head swim. He thought of those first nights half in dream and partly in daydreaming recall, of walking the wet sand in the falling tide with hermit crabs scuttling away from his headlamp. There had been so many of them, more than he’d ever seen. They too walked the wet sand, protected in their shells from the violent crashes and pulls of the rolling waves. In the hammock in the calm hot air his body still felt the ripples and the movement of the heavy swell rising and dropping beneath him. Without swaying he was rolled and roiled, motionless in the hammock.

Going Feral

I would grow dreads if I could. But there's a caveat with that.

I would let them form as a result of inaction. And lack of attention. And willful arrogance. Growing something implies a deliberate action. I propose no action at all.

I think that our original hipster forebearers let their hair go feral as a response to the strict and tidy norms of their era. For them it was another outward sign of rebellion against conformity - the conformity that bounded their appearance and actions.

Some thirty-five years later, I knew people with manicured dreads, who spent just as much time rolling and primping nice evenly-sized and rounded plaits as any sorority sister did curling and coifing. The style had been normalized, but the social message had been obliterated. Not just obliterated, but sodomized and napalmed. Dreads were now kind of cool and a "look" one achieved with time and an assortment of products.

Fashion, IMO, is meant to serve a narrow purpose. It is meant to make funny looking people more attractive. Do you have a horse face? Head square and blocky? There's probably a trick for that too.

It's the same for clothing. Fashion can teach people how to advertise their best features (and hide some defects). But it's meant to be done with a light touch. If you're already smokin' hot, nice hair and trendy shoes are just icing on the cake: likewise, they're not going to make you a foot taller or fifty pounds lighter.

And it's precisely this sort of misplaced energy that irritates me. I think that fashion has morphed from an individual concept to an exercise in crushing one's soul. It officially happened when trendy neo-hippies decided to start rolling their dreads twice a day with special conditioner. When the nonconformists of our era buy into the consumer-oriented fashion and style industry, hope is thin indeed.

But how do I take my own game to the next level? How I can I further my personal agenda of disaffection? Obviously, no more shampoo. There are probably some other general rules I need to live with. For starters, my conquest of apathy-induced dreads, by definition, cannot make my life more complicated or expensive. As a barely take notice now (haven't combed my hair in a week, and switched to a 2 in 1 shampoo/conditioner), that's a low bar already set.

My hippie predecessors were tired of societal norms about how they should dress and wear their hair and live their lives. Along the way that message was bastardized, and all get-ups were subsequently included in gross-scale commercialization of style. To me this isn't about rebelling or unconforming. It's about not caring enough to make an effort anymore.

Going feral also needs to remain practical. If I have problems keeping my helmet on and start taking direct tree limb shots to the head, I have become a hypocrite. And if the project irritates my wife enough that she refuses to sleep with me, well, there's a saying about cutting your nose to spite your face.

Past flirtations with hair apathy make me believe that maybe it just won't dread. But after all, maybe that's the point. Leave it alone, and see what it does.

And maybe, just maybe, that's the defining aspect of my personal brand.

So, let the lack of action begin.

East of town

"Fuck you"
"Fuck me? Fuck your mom. Fucking cunt. Get the fuck outta here!"

It's not that Frank couldn't handle people cussing in his pool hall. He was uniquely situated near the overpass between industrial hell and WWII era tract housing. He saw his share of cracked out punks and meth heads, and a sassy fifteen year old barely raised his hackles. Her clothing he had tolerated, and was even OK with the clove cigarettes. At the site of her piece of shit boyfriend with the ear discs and Billy Idol haircut he had only shrugged. Frank had seen it before.

But to address him improperly, in his own establishment, well that was a mistake.

Mark and I always assumed Frank kept a gun in the back office. We would debate about what it was, but we were both sure it was there. He ran a cash business after all, on the Eastlake border near the highway. I seemed to think it was a simple .357 revolver, snubnosed and gloss black. Mark thought it could be nothing else but a sawed off 12-gauge, maybe even a Mossberg with a conversion kit to hold a couple extra shells. For us, bored and idle as we were, it was as good of a debate topic as anything else while we smoked cigars and played better then average 9-ball.

There was no doubt that Frank could shed his share of abuse. He was a Yankees fan. Cleveland at that time was suffering from a drought of self esteem and sports acumen. Sure, the river didn't really catch fire now, but it still smelled bad. Even the fish flies didn't show up any more, not like they used to. The Browns were gone to Baltimore, and the Indians had shown signs of life only to run into a lockout. The Cavs showed flashes of brilliance before MJ hit a miracle jumper, and then slid into years of mediocrity. To be a Yankees fan, a supporter of regular champions from a gleaming mystical metropolis was just an insult to everyone else.

And it was clear, at Frank's pool hall, that the Yankees were the house team. And it really was a slap in the face we thought. I would later meet Clevelanders, as I aged and grew up, and we always shared a special bond, like deprogrammed cult survivors. My college roommate was mystified by this bond. I tried to explain it to him once. Most Clevelanders, I said trying to quote Howard the Duck, have nowhere else to go, that's why they are still in Cleveland. We live in constant reminder of failure. The city crumbles, we have all of the big city problems with none of the big-city clout. Crack, heroin, gun violence and shitty schools without the draw of tourism. Sure, I admit, we have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but that's only because donors were even more afraid to put it in Detroit. Out of sheer spite to Chicago and New York, we hang on to our concert hall and playhouse, just so we can say "Look, we're every bit as good as you are."

But we're not. Our industries left or are leaving. The only things that are consistent are consistently bad. We got our football team back, but they have been terrible. The Yankees posters remind us of our failures. The Chicago Bulls beat the best Cleveland could throw at them: Nance, Kerr, Price, and Doughtery. Before that Elway crushed the city with the Drive, and later the Indians had The Mesa Choke and coughed up the World Series. Living in Cleveland, you get used to disapointment.

The posters threw it in our face. I made the mistake one year of trying to kid Frank about it, and he almost tore me a new asshole. Three years of playing pool and he would recognize me, but didn't like me. He probably had plenty of friends already in New York.

So we sat back and watched him tear into this pre-pregnant teenager. At least it was entertainment. Had we better things to do, ten-thirty wouldn't have found us partially drunk at Frank's pool hall. We swore all the time, it wasn't really a problem. But this girl was cursing a blue streak and a half, and it irritated Frank. In his world, I guess women make pies and patiently dish out blow jobs on request. In Frank's world, I imagine, the words that come out of a girl's mouth don't include "cocksucker" and "quifer".

He probably thought it reasonable to tell this girl to watch her mouth, to take some time to consider her language, to act like a lady when in his establishment. She probably had father issues though, and quickly learned that there was no winning an argument, swear off, or any kind of confrontation with Frank. Frank was from New York after all, home of pennants, glamour, and real tough people. I sank the eight and started to wonder what had brought him to Cleveland.

While the little dust up had been entertainment, when it settled the hall once again was unintersting. Women were scarce there, even angst ridden girl punks were an improvement. The ceiling seemed dingier, the air even more stale, and the jukebox tinnier and full of treble. That night we left shortly after. Settling up we paid twelve bucks for an hour and a half of pool. On a weekend, I wondered if that kind of take would be worth defending with the business end of a firearm.

I drove back. Back then I kept a five gallon bucket full of beer in the back of the truck, replacing the ice as needed. By now the bottles had been in long enough that all identity had peeled off and floated to the surface. When we could get someone to buy for us, I purposely chose bottles of similar shape and size. We made a game of it, honing our tastes to identify Warsteiner from Sam Adams.

After dropping Mark off I headed back in toward the city. I couldn't help but think of Frank, and wonder where he went off to at night. He had to go somewhere. I lit a cigarette and tried to picture Frank, going home, somewhere east of town. He would drink beer in the hot night air, sweating, looking out over the old industrial valley, a reminder of something that couldn't be flustered or touched or torn or burned down.

The Secret Life of Knees

“I’m going to knock you the fuck out.” I said to myself. It was the sort of promise I found myself making several times during the race. The first instance was at mile 8, when the course doubled back on itself, and racers passed shoulder to shoulder on one lane of the road. A lady with an orange bib (marathon relay) running in the opposite direction was furious, screaming at everyone she passed “Why are you running this way? Why are you running this way?” Of course, she had been shuttled to mile 6, and ran the return loop to the 13.1 mark, and had not run past the convergence. Still though, after passing several dozen, if not several hundred other runners, a pile of orange cones, and race officials, a sane person would have gotten it.

Now I’m a cheerful lad, and I was cruising along, barely a third of the way into my race. And she pulled me out of my zone. Crazy bitch. Something needed to be done, someone needed to look out for every other innocent runner on the course.

I never let her get further with me than “Why are you”. I raised two fingers, pointing my right index finger at the bird I flipped her with the left. She gave me a good hard glare, but shut up. Runners of the 30^th Hyannis marathon, you’re welcome. Still though, I made a mental note to jab her in the throat if I ever saw her again – not that I’m condoning violence against women, I just never wanted to hear her voice again.

The third time was over a span of four miles later in the race, centering around mile 21. I was chasing down a group of people who had slowed their pace. One of them was a kid who I later found out was eleven. I passed him running up one of the last climbs. A few minutes later, he ran up to me, and asked for the time. “Almost two buddy.” Then he ran past me. And stopped. I passed him, and he started running again. After he was about 100 yards ahead of me, he’d stop again. We repeated this dance several times before I started keeping count, then a half a dozen more.

Full disclosure: this little shit ended up beating me. That wasn’t the irritating part; a lot of people beat me that day. But who lets an eleven-year old kid run a marathon? Seriously. Eleven-year olds shouldn’t be left to brush their teeth without supervision. This kid would suddenly pull up to a stop, and nearly trip up someone behind him. I watched one guy nearly steamroll him, and then stop to give the kid a firm talk about race etiquette. After I walked the water stop at around mile 24, I didn’t see him anymore. When my wife watched him cross the line about a minute ahead of me, she was equally shocked. Is there anyway an endurance event is not physically damaging to a kid? Are these parents criminally negligent? If someone knows better, please let me know.

Oh yeah, I was going to push him down the next time or two he stopped. It seemed reasonable at the time.

Bracketed between these two morons, I made my most important vow. And it would be the only pledge of violence I followed through on.

Last year I trained for and ran the half marathon, my first real distance event. In my recap I talked about the lack of epicness that the ordeal entailed. After the fact, I felt somehow cheated. My friend Mark had kept a blog about his training sessions and race day experience, and it remains a piece of riveting journalistic excellence. Don’t expect that from me, not here.

My decision to train was based on several factors. The first is that I like to eat - I mean, really like to eat. I exercise so I can continue to eat what I want, when I want, and until I am sick if I so choose.

For most who know me, you know I am semi-employed, with little to no work in the winter months. I work for a two-man arborist business, and when my boss takes off for three months to go surfing, there is little left for me in terms of employment. Add in the fact that Nantucket is a small and isolated island, and you have the ingredients for an existential crisis. Distance training requires mental discipline, and running in brutal winter conditions needs preparation. Knowing that I had miles to turn probably kept me from turning into a lazy, unemployed and worthless alcoholic.

The last piece was motivation. The unknown has a certain calling to me. I already knew I could train and run a half marathon easily. And though my attitudes are currently shifting on the subject, improving on times was never an important goal. So I signed on for the marathon for the same reason I drove across a sandbar at low tide: to see if I can make it.

Hal Higdon seemed like a delightful old man, so I chose his Intermediate training schedule. I felt comfortable with that level, having completed a half marathon, Iron teams, and some other shorter races the previous year. It peaked at two 20-mile long runs, and tapered three weeks before race day. I was initially a little uncomfortable with only going 20 miles for my long run, but decided that I could push it to twenty-two if I wanted.

The only problem is that September was beginning, and I hadn’t run since early July.

There are several excellent athletes on island, the kind who run full Iron Man triathlons and are competitive in endurance races. I see them in the spring, when we overlap at the pool, then we disappear from eachother’s lives. My wife’s coworker is one of them, and she once told me that my training regimen is backwards, or at least opposite everyone else. This is true. I train hard in the winter and early spring, as I mentioned, since there is nothing else to do. Summer is for work, surfing, and bluefish; drinking beer and clamming, smoking cigars and sitting on the beach. Last year, after Iron Teams, I did nothing until the Nantucket triathlon a month later, and wheezed my way to a subpar 5k. Now I was two months removed from even that piece of isolated activity.

Higdon’s schedule was 18 weeks, which gave me just five weeks to rebuild my mileage base. So the first day I panted my way to 1.75 miles, running a box from my house out Crooked lane to Madaket, and back on Wannacomet. Six miles was that week’s total. The first three-miler nearly killed me.

I had started running only two years before I moved to the island. I was lifting a lot of weights at the time. My employer, the venerable U.S. government, had decided to subsidize $75 a month towards employee gym memberships, as well as provide thirty minutes of paid exercise time three times a week. Combined with a spouse student discount, I was working out at the university gym for $10 a month. With the salary figured in (yes, I was technically getting paid to work out), I actually made an hourly rate of $12.63 while pumping iron.

Even then, I would slowly jog a mile or less, just to warm up. Then I started running outside on nicer days. Then I took the dog with me, so I wouldn’t have to exercise twice to tire her out (an energetic husky mix, she has since become my running partner). Sierra loved the runs, and I slowly increased my mileage. My back pain, a presence for the last two years, started to ease. Running it seemed, loosened and stretched the muscles that no other therapy had been able to reach. Eventually I was regularly running 3-4 miles two or even three times a week.

Getting back on track was harder, because I knew what I was capable of. I kept pushing myself all the way through mileage buildup. The training was unremarkable until Thanksgiving. We spent the holiday with Jen’s aunt and uncle in the Catskills, and the Saturday following the feast I drove to the Ashokan reservoir for a 12-miler. I ended up running 13, looping the only road I knew twice. Both times I ran into a deep ravine, and had to climb back up to the spillway. Having completed that run I finally felt like I had my legs back, and the marathon seemed less abstract, and like a real possibility.

Spending the winter running on Nantucket is an ordeal. There are two obstacles to training here. The weather sucks. My gym membership lapsed, so I did not have the luxury of running inside during inclement weather. I became a devoted follower of forecasts, and planned my runs between gaps in the radar or before and after wind events. Nor’easters were of the utmost importance to track; one storm event could derail runs for an entire weekend. I even became a devoted student of the tides: if I kept on top of the charts I could run along the hard packed sand on Nantucket Sound.

This winter, I am told, was colder than most. Snow stuck around for almost 2 weeks over one stretch. Gales blew. I started one Sunday run in snow, which turned into horizontal rain. By the end, the sun popped out and the temperature was 45 degrees. I ran a tedious 8 miles down and back the Polpis bike path, over snow and ice without falling. I ran into headwinds so strong, the air would make a low whistle if I opened my mouth, like blowing into a soda bottle.

If the weather weren’t enough of an obstacle, it is compounded by the island’s limited size and eclectic geomorphology. One of the reasons I became a student of the tides was to utilize the beaches. There is only one major east-west route across the island: several long and narrow ponds bisect the island running north to south. Very early on, I grew tired of the limited road options. The situation only worsened as my mileage increased.

So I ran beaches. I ran Dionis to Eel Point, and south to the Head of the Plains. I ran along the bottom of Clark’s cove and Hummock Pond. I ran every way I could to avoid running the same path past the windmill and high school. I poured over walkjogrun.com for hours, days in advance mapping my routes. I was always precise about the mileage, and clicked away until I was within a quarter mile of my goal. It was not only the joys of discovering new routes, and running a new piece of undiscovered island, but a process to look forward to. Jen would sometime wonder how I seemed to know weird back streets and trails. The Google Earth platform, as useful as it was, often confuses streets for driveways, trails, or nothing at all. This made runs reconnaissance missions as well.

I exhausted the Middle Moors, alternating staring at Hoick’s Hollow or the old aboveground tennis courts. I started crisscrossing the scrub plains between Eel Point and Madaket roads. I ran from Smith’s point to Wauwinet. I ran the Polpis Milestone loop. I topped altar rock dozens of times, circled the cranberry bogs, and ran narrow trails in an orange cap during gun season. I spooked deer, horses, ducks, lovers, and teens up to no good.

Eventually I took to naming my routes. ‘The Retarded Angel 17’ extensively crisscrossed the island’s west end. I ran it the day before leaving for Christmas vacation, and on the map it looked like an asymmetrical praying angel. ‘There’s Beer at the End’ started in Squam, and ended at the Brewery after fifteen miles. During the last stretch, running along a road cratered with deep puddles, I shocked myself on Bartlett’s electric fence.

Injuries, I think, are part of every endurance runner’s training. I suppose that most are nagging and manageable, as mine seemed to be. I was stupid, and switched from my Saucony’s to New Balance halfway through. For whatever reason, they didn’t feel right. I felt like the sole was slapping hard on the ground. They were stiffer, but this had been recommended to me. I went looking for big guy’s shoe, something that would last longer than my roadsters. In the end, after only nine miles my foot gave out in view of Sankaty. Things were touch and go for a week as I kept my ankle iced, and rush ordered a new pair of the same model Saucony’s. Somehow, the tendon (or ligament) connecting at the top of my foot/bottom of my shin had become inflamed and painful. It was weird.

The major problem came in the latter stages of my second 20-miler. I had to move it up, as a wicked low pressure system was heading our way for the weekend. This storm was the first of two that paralyzed DC. So I moved my run up to Friday – a cold and windy day. My plan was to run the Polpis/Milestone loop, and then a loop through the Moors. By mile 16 my hip flexor had tightened in the cold, and had affected my stride. My knee started to hurt. At mile 18 I started to grunt in pain with every stride, and walked the rest of the way home.

I knew what the problem was. I had impact-related patellar tendonitis years ago. Now it was back. I took a week off. We were going to NYC for vacation anyway. The walking however, made it worse. Fortunately, I was beginning a three-week taper, and only missed a ten miler that weekend. Returning home, I kept on a strict diet of ice and Ibuprofen. The next run I did was a five miler, and I had to stop at 4 because of the pain. I bought a brace, and it helped. After my final Sunday run (an 8-miler), I found that the pain became manageable after five or so miles.

Tim Lepore is my doctor, and I went to see him the Tuesday before the race. His office is filled with arrowheads, stuffed armadillos, Winchester rifle posters, and pictures of him competing in 100-mile endurance races. He was definitely the man I wanted to see.

“I need to know if I’m tearing my knee to shit.” That was my first question for him. I really wanted to compete in the race, but not at the expensive of major damage. After that, I was really interested in managing my pain. Tim examined my knee, feeling around the kneecap, and asking a few other questions.

“I’m not sure if I’m the one you want for advice” he stated. Dr. Lepore, it had been rumored, ran from Hyannis to Provincetown on a stress fracture that he stoicly self-medicated along the way. He is one tough SOB. But I wanted his advice, and he was fair in dispensing it. We talked about where the pain was, how I had trained, and my past history. He told me all about races I should do. Once, his nurse had to restrain him from running home to get me a topical pain reliever from his personal stash.

At the end of the visit, Tim had given me race plan, some quality anti-inflammatory drugs, and motivation. I later returned and picked up a vial of his secret sauce, some kind of topical super awesome icy hot that smelled like garlic. His imparting words were to take it easy until mile twenty, then I could be the wolf, picking off the three-legged deer. He sent me out with strict orders to call him on Monday, and tell him about the race.

Between the meds, the advice, and his personal support, I was back on track to race. I also would have been scared to tell him I didn’t finish. I wanted to be the wolf, not the gimpy deer.

I had entered the Clydesdale class, for men 211 to 225 pounds. Race day morning, I weighed in at a naked 213, before breakfast. There is some kind of formula of calculating energy usage by an athlete during competition. The relationship is quadratic, so it leads to the fact that I consume about four times as much energy to move the same distance as a hundred and fifty pound runner. I am not complaining about being tall and well built. Most times, the advantages are superior. Except in running. I burn through shoes faster, and need to drink more. My knees experience much more striking force on the pavement. One of the reasons I chose Hyannis was to be able to measure my success against people my own size.

Race day was cloudy and cold, with a light breeze. Both sun and snow threatened that day. I opted for a bit of a lighter setup, a thin long sleeved shirt under my regular running jersey, rather than a thicker layer over top. The trip to Hyannis entails getting up early, driving to the airport, flying the commuter plane over, and renting a car. Repeatedly, I had to tamp down my excitement until I was in the starting gate, and was excited to start running. I knew I would be out there a long time, my guess was 4:45, so I was happy to be underway. I ran an eleven minute first mile, repeatedly reigning myself in and waiting for opening to appear, not blowing by slow runners at the start. The second mile passed after another ten minutes, followed by a water stop. I would need to hit all of them – I had calculated my ideal fluid intake at something basically unachievable. By mile five I had settled into a regular ten minute mile, which felt dependable and the right expenditure of effort.

The Hyannis course is a 13.1 mile loop that the marathoners run twice. At the marker for mile number 12, everyone started to pick up the pace. Of the 4500 participants, the marathon had been capped at 500. Only 1 out of every 9 runners were wearing the blue bib, and I reigned in my competitive energy to let the others pass. At thirteen miles, the halves turned right to the finish. I tapped the mile marker, and whispered, “I’m going to knock you the fuck out.”



My race was two races. The first, other than the crazy yelling lady, was without incident. I hit 13.1 miles in about 2:11, exactly the pace I had planned on. My Ipod playlist had been carefully chosen, and I had been in the zone for long stretches at a time, coming to and realizing three miles had passed, and checking my splits.

I thought I was prepared for the letdown after finishing the first loop. My veiled threat was my own motivational ploy. I wasn’t going to strike the 13-mile placard: it was symbolic. I was going to take out that second loop, and I was in for the fight, and I was going to win.

But I had underestimated the emotional letdown. Since mile 12, the crowds had grown, the pace had quickened, and energy was everywhere. I could here music and cheering from the finish gate. Then I passed it, and it all went away. Two hours earlier, the starting chute had been packed with people fenced to the sides. Now, traffic came in one direction. I had to dodge half marathoners who had finished up and were spilling off the sidewalk and getting in my way. On Main street, I was forced to the side and spent a quarter mile in fear of a driver opening a parked car door. Then the enormity of another loop seemed apparent.

Finally, I reached the turn for Sea street, and the sight of a dozen runners stretching out ahead of me. I went through my checklist. My legs felt a little tired, but my stride was smooth. I knew I had plenty of reserve. I meditated on my body. A brief back cramp had come and gone, as had a side stitch. I had no pain in my knee or hip. There was a slight ache from my right instep, and I resolved to ignore it.

Still though, miles 13 to 15 were the toughest, mentally. I had been running for two and a half hours straight by the time I reached the mile marker 15 water station. I stopped and walked through it, as had been my plan. I took three cups of Gatorade, dropping the empties in the three successive garbage cans on the right. After the third cup, I kicked back into a jog and began ascending the slight hill from the Hyline dock to the JFK memorial. I felt great. Runners ahead of me started to flag, I stayed at my 10 minute mile pace, grooving up until mile 18. This was the prettiest stretch of course, and finishing looked like a real possibility.

My goals for the event were tiered. The primary one was to finish the race. Then to finish in under five hours. Then under 4:45, the time I had guessed on my registration form. Those were the goals I had control over. I also wanted to place in my division, but knew enough not try to control anyone else’s race.

I had kept an eye out for mile marker 17. I passed it before a climb, knowing that I had less than ten miles to go. Singe digits. I played the concept over and over again in my mind. At the mile 18 water stop, I pulled off onto a lawn, and stretched my hamstrings. They had started to ache a little, but would not complain again.

I hit mile 20, and could tell my pace was slowing. I was not going to be the wolf. However, I knew I wasn’t the deer either. Nothing hurt terribly, my feet and legs felt, I thought, like I should expect them to feel after running twenty miles. They were tired though, and a little stiff, and that had begun to shorten my stride, and reduce my speed.

Miles 21 to 23 were tough. They ran along a busy street and then through a residential district that was kind of boring. It was the last part of a loop before being led back into the homestretch. Since mile 20, a realization had dawned on me gradually. I knew I was going to finish. Discovering this had been a process, not a revelation, and I would obsess about it for the rest of the race.

During these later miles, my music list failed to distract me from my running, and I turned it down. It was getting cold, windy, with a few specks of drizzle. At times I started feeling chilled. I had stopped passing, or getting passed by everyone (except for that little shit kid). The only song that worked was “So Lonely” by the Police. I put it on the list as a joke. Now it seemed remarkably appropriate. There were few runners, spaced out in a long line. The crowds were gone, and even the volunteers at the water tables and intersections were looking bored with the pace of the later finishers.

I played a lot of mental games. Every 5 minutes I would check my splits, and work out in my head what I thought I was running, and what my finishing time would be. I walked a two hundred yard section as my instep started hurting, and stretched my foot out on a fire hydrant. When I recalculated my splits at mile 23, I realized that I could safely walk the rest of the way in and get under the five-hour gun.

Considering Tim’s wolf-deer motivation, I tired to push my pace for the final 5k. My legs still felt remarkably strong, but stiff. I could not stride out as far as I wanted to, and when I pushed it, my knees hurt. I tried running faster with the same choppy stride to make up the difference, but after 23 miles, the increased aerobic effort was too much. Even after another brief stretch at the final water stop, I still couldn’t do it. I would not be the wolf.

Around 25.5-ish miles, I pulled off to the right. I had plenty of time. I was going to beat my estimate of 4:45. My foot hurt, and I didn’t want to reach the finish line looking like I was in distress. I knew where I was, and walked forward, rotating my torso, adjusted my hat, wiped my face, and shook out my leg. I straightened my shorts and tightened my ipod band. When I saw the sign reading “Hidden drive”, I jumped into a trot. The pain disappeared and my stride lengthened. At the bottom of a hill, the road turned slightly into a quarter mile straightaway before the finish turnoff. Up ahead, I saw the 26 mile marker, and remembered the promise I had made, and kept. I knocked you the fuck out.

I had caught up to a guy in a red jacket who had passed me while I was walking. His kids jumped out into the course, and hand in hand, they ran together for the finish line. I slowed, letting him get ahead. For starters, I wasn’t going to chase down some guy in the last 100 yards of a marathon. Second, I had also spent a good five miles considering my finish line pose, and wanted a clear picture.




My official time was 4:41:46. In all my flexing, I forgot to stop my watch right away. I turned about a 2:11 on the front stretch, and a 2:30 on the back end. I’m not disappointed at all, and am more surprised that between walking through water stops, two stretch breaks, and two walk intervals, I only lost twenty minutes. In hindsight, taking those breaks is likely the reason I was able to go relatively fast for the second loop.

In fact, I won third place in the fat guy category. True, there were only 7 guys who ran the race at that weight, but it is hardly my fault. I got to go around town afterward and eat dinner with two medals around my neck.



As I write this, it is the morning after, and I am very hungry. I burned up around 4500 calories, and have been cold from lack of any energy stores in the tank. I feel like I have run a marathon. My knee hurts, as I haven’t iced it, and my feet hurt if I walk without slippers. Otherwise my legs are just sore. The worst injury though, is some chafing. While my scrotum remained undamaged, it managed to rub both my thighs raw. Go figure, I must have nuts of steel.

What’s next? Probably a week off, and then I’ll start looking into training for the Nantucket Iron Teams Relay. My knee could be a minor problem, but between some strengthening and stretching exercises, rest and reduced mileage, and cross training, I am sure of a recovery. Another marathon? I won’t rule it out, but I am not rushing to find one to enter either. Besides, summer is coming, and summer is for beer and bluefish.